It seems like Kim Jong Il’s hostage diplomacy has worked.
Former President Bill Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang may have been nominally aimed at securing the release of two imprisoned American journalists, but its significance lies more in its possible role in shifting U.S.-North Korea relations onto a new track.
North Korea has always targeted a bilateral dialogue with the U.S. and was apparently keen to receive a leading figure in Pyongyang. The U.S. has also recently suggested taking a fresh approach to North Korea.
The approach in question was explained by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the ASEAN Summit on July 22: “We have made it very clear to the North Koreans that if they will agree to irreversible denuclearization, that the United States, as well as our partners, will move forward on a package of incentives and opportunities, including normalizing relations that will give the people of North Korea a better future.”
Naturally we don’t know the ins and outs of the meeting in Pyongyang yet, but we can guess with some certainty that Kim Jong Il is likely to have expressed a desire for better relations with the U.S., and to have encouraged Washington to mitigate its current hard-line policy. Of course we also don’t know how Clinton would have interpreted such a statement, but if he replied positively then the diplomatic tactics of Kim Jong Il can be said to have been successful.
The normalization of relations between the U.S. and North Korea is an out of date topic, a topic which we have seen several times before; in 1994, 2000 and again in 2007. There is low possibility of normalization this time as well, since both countries are very much aware of the political effects of such an outcome.
Regardless, from where Kim Jong Il is standing there is no other option but to use the U.S., because going via Washington is the only way to both evade U.N. Security Council sanctions, drag diplomatic and economic gains out of China and make South Korea restore the Sunshine Policy all at the same time.
Watching Clinton take the two journalists back to the U.S., it is clear that the South Korean people have a duty to criticize their own administration for its failings. They must criticize it for failing to solve both the Park Wang Ja shooting incident that occurred at Mt. Geumgang more than a year ago, for failing to secure the release of Mr. Yoo, who remains in detention in North Korea, and for failing so far to make any progress on retrieving the crew of the “Yeonan 800” who were arrested just last weekend.
The South Korean people should stand up and vocally point out that the Lee Myung Bak administration is an incapable administration which sticks to a hard-line policy without solving any of the people’s security issues.
The North Korean authorities are well acquainted with their age-old principle, “Isolating South Korea while maintaining close relations with the U.S.” So the South Korean administration should cope with it more adeptly.
The most important thing is not to have a policy on North Korea, but to have a policy whereby the South Korean people understand Kim Jong Il’s North Korea correctly. The biggest damage caused by the previous two South Korean administrations was due to their misunderstanding of North Korea, wherein they believed that what was actually an appeasement policy really represented improved inter-Korean relations.”
Nobody knows whether Kim Jong Il’s tactics will ultimately prove effective. Although the current situation appears similar to the first nuclear crisis in 1994, when Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang and met with Kim Il Sung, actually its nature is quite different.
Either way, the possibility that Clinton might have gone to Pyongyang with some form of new package deal from the Obama administration, perhaps including resumption of the Six Party Talks, normalization of U.S. -North Korea relations and complete denuclearization, is high.
From now on, relations between the two countries may well improve, at least on the surface, but how long that will last is another thing altogether.
